The Loyalists: Dr. Bourinot on the Empire Builders of Canada

THE LOYALISTS, DR, BOURINOT ON THE EMPIRE BUILDERS OF CANADA. He Tells the Story of Their Sufferings and Triumphs—A Splendid Audience and a Pine Reception- Names That Have Gone Down to History, The large school room of Trinity church was filled to the doors last evening to hear Dr. Bourinot, the learned clerk of the house of commons, discourse on the Loyalists. The audience embraced many of the descendants of the Loyalists and was a most attentive and interested one. Dr. Bayard occupied the chair and the platform was occupied by members of the Historical and Loyalist Societies. Dr. Bourinot’s lecture occupied nearly two hours in delivery, but no one thought it too long, and he held the undivided attention of the audience to the end. Dr. Bourinot commended by saying that no time was more opportune than the present to recall the history of the courageous men and women who, more than 100 years ago, left their homes in the old British colonies for the sake of a united empire, The brilliant spectacle that was witnessed on the streets of London in June last, when Canadians joined with representatives from all parts of the British dominions to express their devotion to the queen and their Attachment to British connection— a magnificent spectacle of a contented, loyal and united empire—might well stand out on the broad canvas of history in remarkable contrast with the melancholy picture of last century, when the colonial empire of England was shattered and bands of weeping exiles were seen finding their way to the shores of the possessions that she still owned on the shore of the Atlantic and in the valley of the St. Lawrence. This Loyalist migration was in many respects one of the most remarkable that ever came into any country. Its members were imbued with many qualities that were calculated to lay deep and firm the foundations of stable institutions, of moral and Conservative habits, in the formative period of the Canadian nation’s growth. These people ware, as some American writers now justly call them, the Unionists of those days, just as the revolutionists were the Secessionists. In other words, they were the champions of a United British empire in the 18th century. They comprised the larger portion of the men and women of culture and wealth throughout the old colonies. As Prof. Hosmer has written, the majority "were people of substance and their stake in the country was greater than even that of their opponents, and their patriotism was to the fall as fervent." Their estates were among the fairest in the land; they loved beauty, dignity and refinement, but the day went against them and they had to crowd into ships with the gates of their country barred forever behind them. AT THE OUTBREAK of the war they represented at least one third, others think a majority, of the people of the colonies. Their leaders disapproved, in the great majority of cases, of the indiscreet and ill-judged measures of the English government, bat they believed that there should be a reconsideration of the relations between the colonies and the parent state, and that constitutional methods alone should be followed until the people attained a redress of grievances. They were not prepared to raise the flag of rebellion but suffered and fought for the maintenance of one free, industrial and pacific empire. Dr. Bourinot gave some instances of cruelty with which numbers of men, and women even, were treated, even at a time when the questions at issue were still matters for argument and debate, and not for tarring and feathering or mob violence. Some allowance might be made for the heat of passion during the civil war, but no extenuating circumstances appeared at a later period, when the conditions of the treaty of peace had to be carried out, and the Loyalists were expected to receive just and humane treatment. Professor Goldwin Smith has truly said: "These people were deeply wronged and might well hand down to their sons the memory of that wrong.” At last, however, in the United States themselves, writers deplored the treatment which forced these people to seek other lands. IN NOW RECALLING THE PAST, with its blood-stained pages, Dr. Bourinot said he only wished to pay a tribute to the memory of the long suffering people, still misrepresented in American school books, and point out to the youth of the present day the example they gave of devotion to a noble ideal of unselfishness, of self-sacrifice. It is for us now to be generous, just and conciliatory in all our relations with the great federation to our south, while faithful to those noble principles of devotion to the empire for which the Loyalists suffered and died, and to that dominion of which they were among the makers in the critical times of Canadian development. It was for us to remember that "new occasions teach new duties," and "not to attempt the future’s portal with the past’s blood- rusted key." Dr. Bourinot then went on to describe some of the difficulties that the Loyalists of 1783-4—between 30,000 and 40,000 souls altogether—had encountered in Upper Canada and the maritime provinces, where at least 25,000 souls settled. He pointed out the high standing especially of the men who founded New Brunswick, and made most valuable additions to the province of Nova Scotia. No less than 60 graduates of Harvard, Yale and other American colleges, men who had occupied the highest positions in the old colonies, descendants of the Puritans of New England, of the Cavaliers of Virginia and of the Huguenots found their way to the shores of the Atlantic. The venerable rector of Shelburne, in Nova Scotia, was the youngest son of one of these men, Gideon White, who was the great grandson of the first-born of New England. Joseph Howe, orator, poet and statesman, was the son of the owners of the Boston News Letter, the first paper regularly printed in America. Miner Huntington, the father of the eminent Liberal and friend of Howe, was a member of the Cromwell family. THE ROBINSONS, TISDALES, MERRITTS, and other founders of well known Ontario families, went first to Nova Scotia and then at a later date to the west. The name of Bayard will be recognized as that of a distinguished family of Huguenot ancestry, which has given to St. John an able physician and philanthropic citizen, but also an eminent statesman to the neighboring federation in the records of the maritime provinces we find for a hundred years the names of Ludlow, Putnam, Billop, Oliver, Tyng, Botsford, Peters, Winslow, Chandler, Byles, Stockton, Leonard, Chipman, Wetmore, Parker, Ward, Allen, Haliburton, Wilmot, Wilkins, Jones, Judge Marshall (grandfather of the lecturer), Cunard, Blowers, Bliss, Odell, lngis and numerous others almost as distinguished. In the St. Lawrence val ley we find Bethune, Stuart, Robinson, Tisdale, Keefer, Hagerman, Ryerson, Cartwright, Merritt, Rattan, Macaulay, Kirby, Lampman, Vankoughnet. McNab, Burwell, Deniton, Bowlby, Carscallen and very many others well known to Canadian and imperial fame. The first evidences of the influence of the Loyalist in the dominion were the formation of the two provinces, New Brunswick and Upper Canada, and a large extension of British influence immediately throughout British North America. During the war of 1812-14 the Loyalists who could not save the old colonies to England did their full share in maintaining her supremacy in the countries she still owned in the valley of the St. Lawrence and on the Atlantic seaboard. With this war the history of the Loyalists as a distinct class practically closed. Their children were absorbed among the mixed population that flowed into the country from 1815 until 1830, POLITICAL PARTIES with all their abuses, now formed themselves, and the people divided accordingly. In Lower Canada it was a war of races; in Upper Canada largely a contest between a selfish bureaucracy and reformers, who pressed for responsible government. The grievances were undoubted, but not such as justify the ill-conducted and rash insurrection that followed. In the maritime provinces where the Loyalists predominated, and there was not such a mixed population as in Upper Canada, or a conflict between French and British, as in French Canada, the political controversy always took a strictly constitutional course. The result was favorable to public peace and political freedom from the outset. Joseph Howe, the father of responsible government, and other able descendants of Loyalists were leaders of the reform party, and they believed in constitutional methods for the redress of public grievances, and not in the establishment of a republic, as wildly attempted in old Canada. In this wise course they were actuated by the same loyal principles which guided their fathers In those trying days, when they were called upon to choose between breaking up or maintaining the empire. As soon as the revolt broke out, all classes of loyal Canadians rallied to the support of English supremacy threatened by a few rash men, aided by American raiders. Dr. Bourinot went on to say that the descendants of the Loyalist migration of 1776-1784 might be estimated as 730,000 souls, or about one-seventh of the total French and English, and about one-fifth of the English-speaking people. IN ALL THE VOCATIONS of life, for a hundred years or more, they have filled the most important public positions and exercised a powerful influence on the political material and intellectual development of the whole country. They have given to Canada 16 lieutenant governors, 18 chief justices, 3 prime ministers of provinces since 1867, and 15 ministers of the dominion government, including four finance ministers. Of this number seven have been lieutenant governors since federal union —E B Chandler, L A Wilmot, R D Wilmot, Sir S L Tilley, Joseph Howe, Sir R Hodgson find I B Robinson. The finance ministers were Sir L Tilley, Mr. Foster, Mr. Fielding and Sir R Cartwright. Hon J W Johnson, for so many years was the able leader of the Conservatives in Nova Scotia, the lifelong opponent of Joseph Howe, was to have succeeded that distinguished statesman at government house in Halifax, but he died in Europe before he could assume the responsibilities of office. Mr. Hardy, prime minister of Ontario, is of Loyalist stock on the side of both his parents. The names of the cabinet ministers in addition to these just mentioned, are these: J. H. Dope, W. B. Vail. Alfred Jones, who belongs to a family who have given several distinguished men to Western Canada as well as to New Brunswick. L. Seth Huntington, J Coffin, W. Macdougall, Joseph Howe. B D Wilmot, G Colby, D Tisdale, Sir C H Tupper (on his mother’s side only), and D Mills, presumably, since his family came first to Nova Scotia during the war. In the various legislative bodies of Canada there are now 60 men who claim the same honorable lineage. Among these are the following representatives of New Brunswick: In the house of commons, Messrs. Foster, Ganong and Powell; in the house of assembly of the province, Messrs Alward, Dlbblee, Fowler, Pitts, Bussell, Smith, Stockton and White. In literature, science and education we find the names of Prof. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Barry Stratton, W O Raymond, Prof Ganong and James Hannay—the author of by far the best book on French Acadia that has yet been published in the English language, whom he hoped would continue his work and give the world an equally good history of New Brunswick since the coming of the Loyalists.—Charles Rangster, A Lampman, W Kirby, T C Keefer, Rev Dr Bethune, Lieut-Col George T Dennison— who sometimes appears to think the war of the revolution is still in progress— Chancellor Burwash and Prof. Badgely, of Victoria University, Profs. Bain and Welton, of McMaster, Chancellor Harrison of the New Brunswick University, and Rev. Dr. Carman, general superintendent of the Methodist church of Canada. The roll of meritorious performance by the same class in law, divinity, medicine and commerce was too long to be given during the short time at the disposal of the lecturer. It showed also how large and influential is that element of the Canadian people who take a pride in the fact that they are connected by ties of blood with the royal exiles of last century. IN CONCLUSION Dr. Bourinot contrasted the harmonious relations between Great Britain and her dependencies with the state of things during the eighteenth century. Such questions of taxation, such ignorance of colonial conditions as precipitated an American revolution in the days when the relations of a parent state with her colonies required readjustment, such misunderstandings and blunders as aggravated the political difficulties which existed in Canada until the concession of responsible government, can never again occur under the wise colonial system which has been adopted during the present reign, and gives every possible expansion to colonial energy and ambition. IT TOOK BRITISH STATESMEN more than half a century, from the independence of the 13 colonies to the concession of responsible government, to learn by experience of colonial conditions the best system to apply to countries which had reached a certain high stage in their natural, mineral, political and social development. Canada’s position in the empire is one of which her people may be justly proud, but as Canadians view the past with its many evidences of devotion to the empire, of capacity for self-government, of statesmanlike conception and action in the administration of public affairs, they must not forget how much they owe the men who laid firm and deep the foundations of their national structure French Catholics and Huguenots, Puritans and Cavaliers of the days of the Stuarts, Scots from the Highlands, the Hebrides and the Lowlands, Scotch Irish Protestants from the north and Catholic Celts from the south of Ireland, Englishmen from the hop gardens of Kent and the meadows of Devon, from all parts of that ancient kingdom where the Saxon and, Norman have so happily blended in the course of centuries, all these have contributed to form a Canadian people who have planted themselves successfully and firmly over the vat region which stretches from east to west, to the north of the federal republic. To some of the eminent makers of Canada monuments have been raised, but the vast majority lie In quiet churchyards, where the finger of time has obliterated even their names from the more covered atones where once they were rudely chiseled. But though they are no longer here their spirit still survives in the confidence and energy with which the people of this dominion are laboring to develop the great natural heritage which they possess on the American continent, and in the loyalty which they feel for the British crown and empire. Though they are no longer here, their memory should ever be cherished in the country which owes them so deep a debt of gratitude. In the words of an eloquent son of a Loyalist, Joseph Howe, poet, orator and statesman:— Not here? Oh yes, our hearts their presence feel, Viewless, not voiceless, from the deepest shells On memory’s shore harmonious echoes steal, And names, which, in the days gone by, were spells, Are bent with that soft music. If there dwells The Spirit here our country's fame to spread, While every breast with joy and triumph swells. And earth reverberates to our measured tread, Banner and wreath will own our reverence for the dead. At the close of the lecture a vote of thanks to the lecturer was moved by Dr. Stockton, seconded by Mr. J. D. Hazen, and heartily adopted. On motion of Mr. Geo. Henderson a vote of thanks was given to the rector and wardens of Trinity church for the use of their schoolroom.